Web search engines, such as GOOGLE, MICROSOFT BING, YAHOO!, are designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. The information may consist of web pages, images, documents and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories.
Web searches are primarily done via keyword queries that present users with results (i.e., hits) linked to web sites containing the queried keywords. The results usually contain a mixture of sites the user may or may not have seen before. While users are often searching for new sites, many users usually have a list of preferred sites on which they prefer to conduct the search in different topics. Searching particular sites is possible through writing complex custom query strings for various search engines, which is very inconvenient to the users.
Currently, there are no existing systems for storing and automatically choosing custom user specified web sites for limiting the scope of a web search. There is a need, therefore, for techniques that allow users to store and conveniently apply custom user-specified preferences for querying multiple search engines at the same time.